Bernardino Luini (c. 1480/82 – June 1532) was a North Italian painter from Leonardo's circle. Both Luini and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio were said to have worked with Leonardo directly; he was described to have taken "as much from Leonardo as his native roots enabled him to comprehend".[1] Consequently, many of his works were attributed to Leonardo. He was known especially for his graceful female figures with elongated eyes, called Luinesque by Vladimir Nabokov.[2]

In 1500 he moved to Milan with his father. According to Lomazzo, he trained under Giovan Stefano Scotto, although for others he was a pupil of Ambrogio Bergognone. In 1504-1507 he was probably in Treviso, as attested by a Madonna with Child signed Bernardinus Mediolanensis faciebat which is however of disputed attribution. His first fresco works are an Adoration of the Magi in San Pietro of Luino (c. 1505) and the attributed fresco in the presbytery of Monza Cathedral with St. Gerard of the Painters.

In 1521 he travelled to Rome, where he was influenced by Raphael's style. This is evident in Luini's further frescoes in the Villa La Pelucca executed in 1520-1523, as well as in other works now at Brera. In 1523, Luini painted a polyptych depicting the Entrhroned Madonna and Child surrounded by Angels with Musical Instruments, and surmounted by God the Father, found in the Basilica of San Magno, Legnano.

Circa 1525 he completed a series of frescoes on the life of the Virgin and Christ for the sanctuary of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Saronno; to the same year is attributed the fresco in the counterfaçade of Sant'Abbondio in Como. While at Saronno, he discovered amaretto. Other works from his middle period include a Holy Family in the Museo del Prado, two Salome in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Uffizi and a Portrait of Lady in the National Gallery of Art. From 1526 is a Virgin with Child and Saints in the Lee Fareham collection of Richmond.

In 1529 Luini completed one of his masterworks, the grand Passion and Crucifixion fresco at Santa Maria degli Angeli in Lugano, paired by other works in the same church. In 1531 he returned to the Saronno sanctuary to add other frescoes. In his later career Luini was increasingly influenced by Leonardo, as showed by the St. Anne of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the St. Catherine of the Hermitage.

Madonna with Sts Augustine and Margaret, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris. Signed "Bernardino Milasnese", and dated 1507. "An index of the solidity of Luini's training in a veristic, rigid Quattrocento style" (Freedberg 1993:390), before the transforming, but superficial influence of Leonardo's style.

Virgin, Child, and St. John (c. 1510), National Gallery, London. Another version in Fogg Art Museum, Boston.

Fresco cycles for city and country houses of the Rabia family (1520–25) Now in the Brera, at Berlin, in Washington (National Gallery of Art Procris and Cephalus from Casa Rabia, Milan)[8] and elsewhere. Several panel paintings also at the National Gallery, Washington DC.